From the Editor: Pauletta
Feldman is the secretary of the Kentucky Parents of Blind Children Division.
She and her husband, Maurey Weedman, are both active NFB members. Their eighteen-year-old
son Jamie Weedman is blind and attends the Kentucky School for the Blind (KSB)
part-time. Jamie is mainstreamed to Central High School for several classes.

For many years blind
Kentuckians have been justifiably proud of their school. It has a lovely campus,
and in its buildings and programs students receive some of the best education
available to blind young people today. As a state with a good deal of rural
area, Kentucky's school districts have not made a serious effort to provide
effective services to the blind students they are supposed to serve. The result
has been that KSB has attracted a number of academically able blind students
and has offered exemplary services, skills training, and education.

One would think that
this recipe for success would protect the school from the sort of tampering
that destroys service and undermines excellence. Not so. In the following article
Pauletta Feldman describes what the Kentucky Board of Education (KBE) is now
doing to the blind and deaf students it is supposed to serve. This is what she
says:

A
broad spectrum of the blind community throughout the Commonwealth of Kentucky
is protesting a recent plan introduced by the Kentucky Department of Education
which could result in the destruction of the Kentucky School for the Blind.
Concerned stakeholders include consumer groups, alumnae of the Kentucky School
for the Blind, parents of blind children, and teachers of the visually impaired.
A Save-KSB Steering Committee has been formed with NFB-K president Cathy Jackson
as one of the members.

At
the October 3, 2002, meeting of the Kentucky Board of Education, the leadership
of the Department of Education unveiled an ill-conceived plan for revamping
services to blind and visually impaired and deaf and hearing-impaired children
in Kentucky. This plan will ultimately destroy the Kentucky School for the Blind
(KSB) and the Kentucky School for the Deaf (KSD) and leave Kentucky's blind
and deaf children at risk. Unfortunately, the Board of Education gave the plan
its support, and implementation has begun, though no official board vote appears
to have been taken.

This
plan is similar to those in other states that have resulted in the weakening
of schools for the blind and the deaf throughout the United States. The Kentucky
School for the Blind, founded in 1842, is the third-oldest school for the blind
in the nation; the Kentucky School for the Deaf, founded in 1823, is the oldest
institution of its type in the country.

Of
particular concern are two provisions of the plan:

1.
Elimination of the superintendent positions at both KSB and KSD and replacing
this expert leadership with a four-person team from the Department of Education,
which lacks experience and expertise in administering educational plans for
blind and deaf students

2.
Restriction of access to the wealth of expertise at the two schools for children
throughout Kentucky in grades kindergarten through eight

KDE
leadership responsible for the plan have no real knowledge of blindness or blindness
education. Their only guidance in forming the plan came from a $200,000 study
commissioned by the Kentucky Board of Education and conducted by the American
Institutes of Research (AIR) of Palo Alto, California. None of the researchers
were familiar with the field of visual impairment but were instead specialists
in school finance. AIR did commission experts in the field of visual impairment
to provide direction; however, their advice and 110 years of collective experience
in the field were barely tapped and ultimately discounted. And while a number
of stakeholders participated in the study, their concerns went unheeded and
their advice was ignored.

The
AIR study revealed that the per-pupil costs at KSB were well below the national
average. During the past couple of years KSB has exceeded state test score goals,
boosted enrollment, and enhanced outreach to other parts of the state, while
maintaining cuts in budget and personnel. Despite these promising trends, KDE
has forged ahead with a flawed plan for blind children without heeding the views
of those who live with or understand blindness.

Two
families whose children attend KSB moved to Kentucky just so their blind children
could receive a good education. They have come from states--Nebraska and New
Mexico--where the schools for the blind have been weakened by draining resources
to create regional programs.

"We
came here because Kentucky still had a good school for the blind. And now they
[KDE] are trying to do the same thing to KSB that was done to the Nebraska school,"
says Mitch Dahmke of Taylorsville, Kentucky.

While
KDE claims that its plan will expand services to children, it will ultimately
limit them by destroying the best option for a good education that many children
in the state have. The proposed plan will make it virtually impossible for children
throughout the state in grades K through eight to attend KSB and will have them
instead educated through regional programs. However, Kentucky has a dire shortage
of teachers of the visually impaired to staff regional programs. In response
to this shortage the AIR study stated: "These circumstances suggest that
this is not the best time to be raising standards for some of these professions."
("A Study of the Kentucky Schools for the Deaf and Blind," American
Institutes of Research, May, 2002, p. 85)

Now this new plan for students
who are blind or deaf is drawing national attention and concern. Several national
organizations of and for the blind, representing the collective wisdom of tens
of thousands of blind and visually impaired people, as well as nationally recognized
experts in the field of visual impairment, are weighing in on the KDE plan.
The groups include the National Federation of the Blind and the National
Organization of Parents of Blind Children in Baltimore, Maryland; the American
Foundation for the Blind in New York City; the American Council of the
Blind in Washington, D.C.; and the Association for the Education and
Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired in Alexandria, Virginia.

These
national groups are expressing dismay at the removal of expertise from the guidance
of the new plan through elimination of the superintendent positions at KSB and
KSD. Of equal concern is the plan to regionalize services in such a way as to
restrict younger students throughout the state from attending the schools, forcing
them instead into regional programs--poor substitutes for the richness of educational
experiences children at the schools currently receive.

Kentucky's blind children
deserve to have a good education. Sadly, this will not happen if the Kentucky
Department of Education has its way.